If this your first time here, HELLO! I do a link-up every Wednesday! Post a picture(s) and link back to it here. Wordless Wednesday is a great day to post an awesome picture that “speaks” for itself, no words needed.

Be sure to check out Wordless Wednesday Link-Ups at these other sites also:

I got back late last night after being in New York City for the past five days. I was there for the BlogHer12′ Conference.

Hello NYC at Night!

I arrived at JFK Airport at around midnight Wednesday night. I didn’t make it to my hotel until about 1:30am or so. Luckily, I caught a cab from the airport with my friends Janice and Susan from 5 Minutes For Mom.

Hello Central Park!

Hello Six Miles Done!

I followed my training planand my 6-mile long run for the week. Yippee!! Worst run ever though. It was hot, humid, and muggy outside. I was also having side pain the few days prior to leaving for New York. I held my side a ton while running. I also did the BlogHer 5K the next day. Nine miles of running done while in New York.

Hello Subway!

I have never taken the subway. I took the subway all by myself to meet Carriein Chinatown at The Garment District. Go Me!

I posted on my personal Facebook that I felt like I was in an episode of Law and Order. I didn’t get attacked running in the park, and I braved the subway. Silly Julie. But seriously, the subway was so much cheaper than taking a cab. Silly bloggers were spending tons of money on cabs.

I’m celebrating Bloggy Boot Camp Day today with SITS Girls! This is the two year anniversary of education and networking through Bloggy Boot Camp. I’ve had the pleasure of attending, speaking at, and photographing threeBloggy Boot Camps and I thought I would share some highlights of the conferences through my photos.

Bloggy Boot Camp is my favorite blog conference that I have attended. And believe me, I have attended several conferences. The education and networking connections that I have made through Bloggy Boot Camp have made me more confident with my blog, and the relationships with bloggers that I met through the conferences are invaluable.

If this your first time here, HELLO! I do a link-up every Wednesday! Post a picture(s) and link back to it here. Wordless Wednesday is a great day to post an awesome picture that “speaks” for itself, no words needed.

Be sure to check out Wordless Wednesday Link-Ups at these other sites also:

We arrived at the location, a little early and I got my chatter box on. If you don’t know me, you should know, I love to talk. Sorry, it is a bad problem. My only problem is that I start talking with them, and then I promptly forget their names. It is becoming a VERY BAD habit for me. So please forgive me if you met me and I seemed rude or clueless. I’m just tired, so very tired from life.

After we formerly checked in, we got our mingling on. It was fun to have some time to chat with everyone. I spoke with some old friends, and made some new ones.

And since it was Blog Sugar, I had some cotton candy with friends. I captured this photo of Erin and Alissa with their cotton candy. I can already say what Erin will reply with, “ugh a picture of me and my double chin”. Oh Erin, you don’t have a double chin, it was just the way the photo was taken. I promise.

And YIPPEE, they had a great photobooth set-up. Melissa Munding a local photographer captured these fun moments with the great striped backdrop.

Jen is hilarious and was one of the hostesses/leaders for the event. And a personal friend, of course. She is one of the many people who think I am nuts. She is an awesome photographer, also.

And look at me and Erin, all matchy-matchy in our stripes. Erin and I are both CRAZY BUSY ADD/OCD MOMS. Yes, I had to write that in caps, to stress how crazy we are. Erin and I are texting buddies, and she might leave things in her mailbox for me. I may have even done a drive-by at her house for an Irish Car Bomb cupcake in the Spring.

Can you believe that this was only the beginning of the event? Just wait, there’s more!

At each place setting, we were greeted with a donut and agenda. Now this is definitely a nice greeting. A little more sugar to start the day. We had a great welcome and some introductions from Rachel, who was/is the Queen of Blog Sugar, aka Founder.

And then, we were on our way to listen to our first speaker. I had chosen, Jen. She was speaking on photography. Jen gave some awesome tips. She started the conversation off by asking everyone whether they were blogging on Blogger or WordPress. I was shocked at how many people are still on Blogger and have a .blogspot.com URL for their sites. PEOPLE please buy a dot com. They are so CHEAP.

Along with talking about photography skills, white balance, composure, and editing, we discussed photo hosting. I host my photographs on Flickr for my blog. I pay for the premium version. I believe that it is $24.95 a YEAR. This blog is a hobby, but like any other hobby, I spend and invest money on it. When you load your photographs onto Blogger, they own/have your photos. If your blog crashes, you can lose those photos. Make sure you have your blog photos uploaded somewhere else.

After listening to Jen speak, it was time for dinner. I sat down with my table mates, and shoveled until it was done. I was soooo hungry. But of course, I saved some room for dessert. There was a dessert buffet in the back of the room. I waited for a few minutes and I should have gone sooner, because the desserts were disappearing fast.

I assure you, I did not eat everything on this plate. I took little bites here and there. But seriously, this sugar goodness was amazing. The desserts were from Mod Gourmet.

After devouring dinner and dessert, I ventured on to my next speaker, Sarah. Sarah is one of those people that I’ve heard so much about, but have never met. And who would have known, we live very close to each other too.

I walked away with a ton of thoughts in my head after hearing Sarah speak. I also made some realizations. Some days, I’ve got nothing to post. So I’m not going to stress about posting here. Since my son entered elementary school last year, we are swamped. I am up late at night trying to get everything in my life done, and sometimes, there is just no time for blogging. But I do wish I had more time for photography. My camera misses me.

Nish. She was the third and last speaker that I had chosen. I met Nish at Blissdom earlier in the year. We were both official photographers, so we both ran around like crazy people, never really stopping to chat.

Nish spoke about Hot Topics and Haters. Now I love a hot topic, but I rarely write or post about them. I have a general rule that I’ve started to live by when blogging, “If I go back into my archives two years from now, will this controversial and heated post make sense?” I have enough controversy in my life. I don’t need to write about it. Honestly, I know a lot of people who write about controversial topics just to raise their blog traffic. I’ve seen people go on a complete rant about a controversial topic when it makes NO SENSE with the rest of their blog posts. Nish likes to call those “word bombs”.

All I can say is that people REALLY need to research a topic before they post about it, especially when they write a post that might become controversial. If you have a personal story, that is even better. Tell the story about how this topic relates to you. I tend to get “bitchy” on posts that talk about working mothers. But I rarely post my rants on my own blog. But I do appreciate a good controversial post, because I love some drama. So hopefully, the writer will control and work through the comments on a post, because it can get out of hand.

Here is the first of three posts that Nish wrote to recap her talk. I did lots of nodding and “uh huhs” when she was speaking. It was like I knew whom she was talking about.

After hearing Nish speak, I headed back to my table. Some lucky women won raffle prizes, and then we were introduced to Love146. Love146 works toward the abolition of child sex slavery and exploitation through Prevention and Aftercare solutions while contributing to a growing abolition movement.

I’m including their video so you can get a little preview about the organization. These people are doing amazing things.

After a tear-filled presentation from Love146, our closing and keynote speaker, Meg Duerksen came up to speak. Meg spoke about “using your blog for good”. Meg also told her story about Cora’s Playground Fundraiser. I remember when the fundraiser was going on in 2009. Because of Cora bringing everyone together, I still read many of the blogs of the women whom were involved with Cora’s Playground. Meg was so real and genuine. It was a nice end to the day.

At the end of the night, I was very tired from a long day, but I wanted to get some pictures with some of my new friends. I’m sure that there’s more, but I grabbed one with Ashley and me, because it was pretty cute.

Isn’t Ashley adorable? I wanted to package her up and take her home with me. I’ve been reading Ashley’s blog for a few months. She came up to introduce herself at the end of the night. I handed her my business card, and waited for the smile. I told her that I didn’t want to run and scream, “Hi I’m Julie, Angry Julie” because there were already so many people that wanted to meet her.

I want to give a shout out to everyone I met. Seriously, I will be stopping by your sites. There are too many great people to list.

This post has been in draft for a few weeks so forgive me. I haven’t even written a complete BlogHer Recap either, because I have way too much to say!!

On Sunday, I attended a Blog Conference held in Westminster, CA called Blog Sugar. It was pretty awesome to be able to drive to an event. It was great to see everyone there. I’m waiting to get some more pictures to do a recap post, but I thought that I would give you a little teaser here.

We all have one of these at our place setting at the tables. A little sugar for Blog Sugar. Of course, Erin loves some Twilight, so we had to take this picture.

Welcome to “Angry Julie Monday’s Wordless Wednesday Linky”!

If this your first time here, HELLO! I do a link-up every Wednesday! Post a picture(s) and link back to it here. Wordless Wednesday is a great day to post an awesome picture that “speaks” for itself, no words needed.

Be sure to check out Wordless Wednesday Link-Ups at these other sites also:

I’m participating in What I Wore Wednesday for the second week in a row. Don’t worry, this is not going to be a pattern. I figured I would post some pictures of my outfits since I had Kelly take some pictures while we were at BlogHer. I’m a little traumatized over my fat rolls and my meaty arms in these pictures. The hardcore workouts start as soon as I’m back from vacation.

I had to include a close-up of the necklace. It doesn’t like too kiddish does it? My mom laughed at me when I bought it.

Welcome to “Angry Julie Monday’s Wordless Wednesday Linky”!

If this your first time here, HELLO! I do a link-up every Wednesday! Post a picture(s) and link back to it here. Wordless Wednesday is a great day to post an awesome picture that “speaks” for itself, no words needed.

Kelly participates in What I Wore Wednesday almost weekly. I would like to participate but the position of the mirror in our master bedroom makes it difficult to take self portraits. Luckily, Kelly and I were roommates for BlogHer last week. We were able to take photographs of each other’s outfits. We wore multiple outfits on many of the days, so I’m going to break up these outfit posts into a few Wednesdays.

My oh my, I look pregnant in this photo but really, the dress wasn’t that puffy in person.

If this your first time here, HELLO! I do a link-up every Wednesday! Post a picture(s) and link back to it here. Wordless Wednesday is a great day to post an awesome picture that “speaks” for itself, no words needed.

This is the time of year for Blog Conferences, or a certain very large Blog Conference known as BlogHer. This will be my 3rd BlogHer conference. I learn something new every year, but many things are always the same. I was never really worried about attending blog conferences, because I have survived formal recruitment, or for the non-Greeks, Sorority Rush.

Every summer before school started at our University, we would have workshops, and practices. Sororities are very serious about formal recruitment. By the end of the summer, we were polished in our speaking, interview skills, and theme songs. Seriously, even my husband still knows my Sorority songs.

Angry Julie Circa 1993.

Top 10 List on Why Blog Conferences and Sorority Rush Are Similar

1. Name Tags

I wore a name tag throughout Sorority Rush. Luckily my name is pretty easy to pronounce, and my maiden last name is plain. It was always hard for me to pronounce people’s names. For potential new members in my sorority, I had to pay attention to their names and relate them to “what they were wearing, where they grew up etc”.

Everyone will be wearing those “Official Name Tags.” You know the kind, where you are staring at someone’s chest, trying to figure out who they are. I’ve met hundreds of people at blog conferences and I still forget people’s names. Don’t be embarrassed. It happens to everyone. Many people do not use their real names in the blog world. Their name tags may only have their blog name or Twitter ID on them. People never call me by my real name anymore, I get called “Angry Julie” mostly.

2. Your “Best Clothes”

During Sorority Rush, I wore dresses every day. I didn’t wear formal dresses, but more in the line of “business casual” with cute shoes and accessories. I didn’t show up in my usual jeans, t-shirt, and flip-flops. I was trying to give a good first impression.

Although you may be blogging from home in your sweatpants, and dirty t-shirts, those are probably not the best things to wear to a blog conference. If you blog for business, or want to blog more professionally, dress the part. I suggest wearing something along the lines of “business casual” with some accessories, and brushing your hair. People will remember what you wore, and you will most likely be photographed in these clothes. I’m one of those shutterbugs, and I take LOTS OF PICTURES at blog conferences.

3. Conversation

During Sorority Rush the most common questions are: What is your name? Where are you from? What high school did you go to? What is your major? Why do you want to join a sorority? These questions begin simple, and they get more involved once you spend more time at a particular sorority.

At a blog conference, you hear these questions: What is your name? What is the name of your blog? What is your blog about? Why are you here at BlogHer, or other conference? You need to have your “Elevator Pitch” ready.

When you really need to be ready for is “Awkward Conversations”. There are a ton of things to do and see while at a blog conference. You need to make the most of your time there. It can be hard when you get stuck in an “awkward conversation” with someone. Come up with a plan ahead of time. Make a signal to your friends that you are attending these events with. I’m not trying to be rude, but I’ve spent 30 minutes talking about randomness when I missing a dinner event, etc.

4. Parties

When I talk about Sorority Rush parties, I don’t mean the kind that comes with red plastic cups and kegs of beer. I’m talking about intimate events where you meet the members of the Sorority. These parties have a certain frame, and you need to make the most out of it. Find people who you can have conversation with, and make sure to ask lots of questions.

I’m sure everyone has heard about “parties” or those special invite-only “brand events” at BlogHer. I’ve been invited to many in the past three years, and I did not attend every party that I was invited to. Just because you are invited, doesn’t mean that you have to go. Pick the invites that relate to you. It doesn’t make sense for me to attend a brand event that caters to diapers. I had the most fun at an event last year held in a penthouse (ok it was private) with a small group of people. I formed so many friendships from just two hours sitting around chatting at that event.

5. Name Droppers

In College Life, these are the people who say: “My dad paid for the library to be built” and”My mom is an alumna of this sorority, and I’m guaranteed to get in.” You might just want to smack them. I know I did.

In Blog Life, these are the people who say things like: “I invented blogs”, “I’ve been blogging since 2004″ and “I’m in the Top 10 List of This Website XYZ”, and “I’m so awesome on the Internet that I have 50,000 Twitter Followers and I only follow 20 people”. It really makes me want to PIMMAL (Puke In My Mouth A Little).

Honestly, you never truly know everything about someone. Some of these little bloggers or lesser known peeps, they may have their PhD or be a rocket scientist. So the phrase, “I’m big on the Internet” works in this case. I wish I had some t-shirts to hand out to all of the name droppers.

6. Food and Drinks (Drinking)

During Sorority Rush, you will be given finger foods and desserts. You will have the choices of water, punch, sparkling cider, or sometimes lemonade to drink. These type of things don’t sustain you. You have to make sure to get some food in between events. Although alcoholic beverages are not allowed during Official Sorority Rush Events, there will be parties during the week, thrown by the Fraternities. You really don’t want to get wasted drunk and make a fool of yourself in front of your future Sorority Sisters.

BlogHer will feed you breakfast and lunch on Friday and Saturday, if you purchase a Full Conference Pass. Please make sure that you take advantage of these meals. With the hustle and bustle of speaking panels, brand invites, Official BlogHer Parties, showering, and well, sometimes sleeping...it can be hard to intake food or even find it. Seriously, I need more food than a vegetable platter to make it through the day. Jill and I walked several miles in New York City last year, to get food, and ended up with pizza. Take the time to make REAL dinner plans with your blogging friends. Research restaurants and places to eat in advance. Make a list of choices. A hungry blogger is a cranky blogger. Oh, and the alcohol is flowing. I’ve observed one too many drunk mommy blogger. It is not pretty. People, slow down on the booze.

And it takes me like a WEEK to recover from any and all blog conferences. I have a condition, which Casey has dubbed as “Conference Colon”, it is not pretty.

7. Networking

In College, joining a Sorority or Fraternity is a great place to network. Seriously, alumna(e) are great for job opportunities, mentoring and internships. It was awesome finding a fellow Sorority Sister who has already taken a certain class and can give you some pointers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said as an adult: “So and so is a Sorority Sister or Member of my Sorority, in professional situations. Plus if you move to another state, you always have an instant group of friends with your local Alumna Chapter. The Alumna are great for finding the right schools, doctors, and anything else you might need while transitioning.

One of the main reasons to attend a Blog Conference is for networking purposes. It is the perfect time and place to talk to brand, Public Relations (PR) Representatives, and fellow bloggers. You can make lasting connections through this networking. I can email back and forth with someone for months. But meeting face-to-face and having in-person conversations is PRICELESS. While you are networking, think of the experience as a job interview, and act appropriately.

8. Cliques

There will always be cliques or intimate and exclusive groups in school. I don’t think that there is any way of preventing them. While in my Sorority, some of the cliques in our Chapter were based on the Fraternities that we hung out with, and whom other girls were dating. During Sorority Rush, it is easy to spot the different Cliques of girls within a Sorority Chapter. They usually dress or do their hair similar, and are grouped together. As a Sorority Advisor, we tried to make the cliques less obvious, but you can only try so hard with 18-20 year old girls.

Blogging and Blog Conferences bring out the cliques. Some of the cliques are based on niche, geographical location, time blogging, or certain blog networks. Of course, I’m a total wanderer. I’m pretty good at working a crowd, and try to fit in amongst all of the different cliques. I can try as much as I want, but I will never fit in the: homeschooling bloggers, or male bloggers. Moral of the story: find your people, they are out there.

9. Gossip

I am woman, hear me roar. I am woman, and I gossip. I cannot tell you a lie. I do.

When you are going into or joining groups in college, gossip can be used for good. It is always good to hear the reputations or gossip about the Sororities that you are potentially joining. Would you want to join a Sorority that has a reputation as being slutty? Me thinks not! You need to go into things educated, but you are also free to make your own individuals choices. Even amongst the best of friends, and Sorority Sisters, there is gossip.

Bloggers are a gossipy bunch…. Conversations such as: “Blogger XYZ is sponsored by big multi-million dollar company”, “Blogger XYZ is writing a book or is going on TV”, might occur at BlogHer. So what! Seriously, I work hard as a personal blogger. It takes time to come up with this mindless dribble the I post here. Can you imagine how much work that it takes to write a book, or get featured on TV? I can’t even fathom it.

10. New Friends

I made some of my best friends during Sorority Rush. I found people who I had things in common with, and even met my Sorority Big Sister, the first day of Rush. My best friend, Stacey, and I met during Alumna events via our Sorority. We bonded over painting the Sorority House, and getting checkbooks in order.

I’ve made some wonderful friends through blogging and blog conferences. I’ve really secured these connections while sitting on the floor or talking in a hallway in between events at BlogHer, Blissdom, and Mom2Summit. My friendship was forged with Tauni last year while taking a taxi from the airport in New York last year at the beginning of BlogHer.

But seriously, I love BlogHer….and I will be wearing all my fanciest dresses, headbands, and shoes just to meet you!!

If you made it through all of my rambling, you might enjoy previous posts that I wrote relating to BlogHer:

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